Alan Freed's ashes, removed from the Rock Hall, will stay in Cleveland

The ashes of Alan Freed, the disc jockey credited with popularizing the term “rock ‘n’ roll,” are no longer in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but their final resting place won’t be too far away.

On Aug. 4, the urn was removed from the hall and given to Freed’s family. Rock Hall officials say it was because they wanted the exhibit to focus more on Freed’s story and not his remains.

Freed launched the “Moondog Show” on Cleveland’s WJW-AM in 1951 as a showcase for rhythm & blues records by black artists. The program became wildly popular. Freed started using the term “rock and roll” — slang for sex — to describe the new sound that was starting to spread to the mainstream, and it stuck.

He moved to New York’s WINS in 1954, which gave him and the music a national platform. The rest is history.

Later, Freed was caught up in the “payola” scandal, in which DJs illegally took secret payments to play records. He died in 1965 at the age of 43.

Freed’s story came to the big screen in 1978’s American Hot Wax. It’s notable for giving Jay Leno and Fran Drescher some of their earliest work. The film was also notable for performances by rock pioneers Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.